Oscars Reactions, Apple Subscriptions, and The Team Behind Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber

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Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher, and my voice is slowly returning.

And today, my show on Cinemax drops.

Oh, so exciting.

Cinemax.

You have to stop.

You have to stop.

You need to support your friends.

First of all, you're calling it Cinemax, and you really want to to say Skinemax.

And then your sprockets thing when you were trying to sell it.

That's not nice.

By the way, have you seen the promos we're seeing on Poland?

Yes, you all look ridiculous in the clothes.

It's like all the anchors got trapped in their nephew's closet and said, we're going for an aging skateboarder look or we want you to get dressed at the Brooklyn department at JCPenney's.

What do they have us wearing exactly?

Anyways, I'm very excited.

Still chance for me to be canceled before it drops.

Let me just say, going through it, you looked like you always look.

You had the clothes you, you know, you have the clothes you wear.

You look like me look like me.

Chris Wallace was like, I'm wearing my fucking suit, and that's the way it's going to go.

Like, Anderson looked dreamy.

He looked really good.

Anderson looked dreamy.

I thought Don Lemon looked okay in casual clothes.

Wolf Blitzer, put back on your suit.

That's all I have to say.

And then

the others just need, they just don't dress like that.

Maybe they do.

I don't know.

No, they don't.

They don't.

They don't.

It was like, I was like, too much cash.

Let it drop in, Kara.

Is it dropping in a good way?

No, no.

CNN Plus dropping today, original programming.

And we're going to see if news and politics, if people pull out their credit card for it, it's a big deal.

My brother asked if you should spend $3 on watching you.

By the way, I invited you to the launch party as my plus one, and you turned me down.

I thought that was nice.

I'm going to be, when is it tonight?

Yeah, it's tonight.

I'm in San Francisco, Scott.

Send the plane.

You know, scramble the jets.

If you were invested in this relationship, you would have made the effort.

That would have been fun.

You and me at the CNN Plus.

Yeah, we would have.

That would have been fun.

We could have made out and really fucked with the.

There you go.

I'm really excited.

But I'm serious.

I'm excited about my show, Kara.

I want you to watch it and tell everyone how much you enjoy it.

I shall.

I'm going to subscribe to it today.

Good.

I shall watch it.

Can you pull Melania Trump and create 10,000 fake wallets and subscribe several thousand times?

No.

That's what I need.

Here's the deal.

I'm going to give you the honest opinion when I think of it.

I hope you don't mind.

That's fine as long as you like it.

If you don't, keep it to yourself.

I'm very fragile right now.

I'm very fragile.

I thought I was on Cinemax.

I'm on CNN Plus with Wolf Blitzer.

That is a huge letdown.

I can't.

You know what?

The world is not enough for Scott Galloway.

Remember that?

Bond movies.

You know it.

You know it.

Speaking of Bond movies,

I'm glad that Billie Eilish and her brother won the Academy Award for Song, but I was going for the Encantos song that did not win, which is beautiful.

But it did win Best Animation Feature, which was great.

Tell us, let's talk about Will Smith and Chris Rock.

This was appalling.

Jada, I love you.

G.I.

Jane 2, can't wait to see it.

All right?

Oh, Richard.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

Will Smith just smacked the shit out of me.

Keep my name out your fucking mouth.

Wow, dude.

Yes.

It was a G.I.

Jane jump.

Keep my wife's name out your fucking mouth.

I'm going to, okay?

Well, you know, people were laughing until they weren't.

Obviously, everyone got silent.

Yeah, I was thinking about it.

I had a really visceral reaction to this.

And I was thinking, I think it's important

that we stop when we have really emotional reactions to things because I think it puts us in touch with our emotions and what's important to us, what we care about, what offends us.

And the last image I saw that I had such an emotional reaction to was that reaction of the woman being taken out of a maternity ward in

Ukraine.

And I thought, why was I so upset by this?

I think this is totally unacceptable and outrageous.

And I think it kind of marks the age where

we have a man normalizing violence and then getting an award and then parting afterwards at the Vanity Fair Awards.

I think there is absolutely no excuse for this.

If I was offended by every joke about hair, I'd be in a Super Max prison.

This type of joking isn't even, everyone's saying, well, it was an inappropriate joke.

We joke with each other as a means of affection.

When Ricky Gervais calls Martin Scorsese too short to be on Disney rides, maybe it crosses the line, maybe it doesn't.

But what happens at Open Mike at the comedy store?

You know, Kathy Griffin tweeted about it.

I thought very intelligently about this.

It's a very bad practice to walk up on a stage and physically assault a comedian.

Now we all have to worry about who wants to be the next Will Smith in comedy clubs and theaters.

I think she's 100% right.

Absolutely.

It was crazy.

It was crazy that they were laughing about it and applauding it.

You know, everyone's saying, well, what if a white man had hit a black man or a black man hit a white man?

I think the more interesting comparison we can draw is, what if someone not famous had rushed the stage and hit Chris Rock?

That person.

And I thought at first I was so angry.

I said he should be arrested.

And I thought, well, this is a private event.

Two people who know each other, the law probably shouldn't get involved.

And he hasn't filed charges.

But you know who really fucked up here?

And I've advised them.

The Academy cannot have, he should have been escorted from the theater.

And you know who, in my view, is the real man here?

Chris Rock.

What if Chris Rock had jumped back into the audience and started a melee?

So this is, and by the way, and all this bullshit coming out this morning that don't insult women, men protecting women.

You know what increases violence against women?

Violence.

Yeah.

When we normalize violence, you know, and it's like, well, you know, this, there was a great

several people tweeted that sentence.

There was a great Eugene Carroll, who's the Elle Magazine advice columnist author, who was assaulted by Trump, said,

you know, open quote, love will make you do crazy things, close quote.

And she wrote, every woman who's ever been hit has heard that one.

So this is, this is a terrible reflection on our society.

It is normalizing violence.

The The Academy needs to step in here.

I think Chris Rock deserves tremendous kudos for de-escalating the situation.

That's what a real man does.

And I am just incredibly shocked.

And I think, unfortunately, it marks the age in a negative way.

And I think the people who decided to party with someone who had just assaulted someone else and give him a standing ovation.

It just makes,

I was really rattled by it.

How did you feel about it when you saw it?

I was rattled by it.

I think it makes Hollywood Hollywood look ridiculous.

I think the Academy should have removed him from the auditorium, even if they probably knew he won, right?

They probably had it already.

And so, what could they do?

But I don't believe he won, honestly.

He didn't deserve it compared to Benedict Cumber.

I saw that movie.

It was good.

But, you know, Benedict Cumberbatch probably deserved many people in that group probably deserved it over him and that performance.

But

nonetheless, they should have removed.

And again, I like that movie quite a bit.

I like the Williams sisters.

They should have removed him from

the auditorium and not given him the Oscar.

You know, and there was a lot of like,

only in this case, I think it's ridiculous.

Only white people are complaining.

Like, no, nobody likes, this is violent.

A lot of violence is violent.

White people should keep them to themselves.

This is the issue.

No, violence is this.

No, no, sorry.

Whatever.

I've never bought this notion.

Words aren't violence.

Violence is violence.

That's correct.

That is correct.

And

this was battery.

It makes so many different cohorts look awful.

And we got to ask ourselves, do we want to be that nation?

Do we want to be the nation that when our leaders assemble, as they do in some nations, they on a regular basis break out into a fistfight?

Do we want to be the nation where we can't have gatherings

without this type of violence?

Do we want to be a nation?

And the thing that just upsets me is this is part of a trend now.

We have people saying, oh, no,

it was a

justified protest

to describe a capital officer being bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher or a protester shot in the gut by a security guard.

We can't normalize violence.

And by the way, these are the people who decried those people.

So if you don't decry this,

total hypocrites.

Total hypocrites.

Well, I thought of you last night because I thought, quite frankly, when I saw the Twitter, I'm like, where's cancel culture when you need it?

Yeah.

I just, I think Will Smith deserves to be canceled here.

I think this was.

Right.

And people say, well, he's got a lot going on.

Well, that's not an excuse.

Yeah, it's not.

It was ridiculous.

It was such a good thing.

And then they went to the protecting part of the world.

Part of me thinks they should take the Academy Award away from him.

That's what they should do.

Really,

I found this really rattling and what it says about our society.

And this is where I end up.

It's like, okay, Action Star, arguably the most successful Action Star of the last decade,

commits battery and is given award.

That's where we are.

Well, I don't know if that, you know, it was just a weird confluence of events.

It would have, you know, but anyway.

People party with the guy.

He got a standing ovation from all these people who claim to decry violence in all forms.

I agree.

I think it's probably reason to not have these fucking award shows anymore.

I found the whole thing gross.

Distasteful.

And

a terrible mark on the edge.

But I was thrilled that

Ariana DeBose won.

All right.

I'm going to say, and Canto won.

I liked Liza Minelli.

I thought she was.

Liza Minelli was.

And Lady Gaga, as usual, you know, women should run friggin everything.

Like, here we go.

It's trope.

Lady Gaga was a classic.

Liza Minelli.

I thought the ladies were fine, the three hosts.

Amy Toomer really wanted wanted to say something bad, and she went pretty close to saying there's a different vibe in the room.

She should have turned to him and said, you piece of shit.

I'm telling you.

This is going to age really, really poorly for Will Smith.

And I'm telling you, think about what happened to Chris Rock.

He was assaulted.

He tried to de-escalate.

He took it.

And he tried to move on.

He's not filing charges.

His attitude is the police shouldn't be involved here.

I bet Chris Rock suffers more.

I think Chris Rock deserves tremendous.

That's what men do.

They de-escalate.

I'll remind you that next time you yell at me.

Anyway,

we'll talk about

Europe.

I will agree with you that this is an abusive relationship.

We agree on that.

I never pretend what I am.

Anyway, we'll talk about Europe's game-changing.

We're going to have other things to talk about, game-changing tech legislation.

Also, Apple may be going the subscription route.

And so Scott gets to take a lap.

We'll speak about part of the team behind Superpump, the Showtime series about Travis Kalanik of Uber.

But first, in non-Will Smith Oscar News, Coda, just very quickly, became the first streaming platform to win Best Picture.

I have not seen it yet, but I really want to.

My brother loved it, for example.

Apple reportedly spent around $25 million on awards marketing for Coda.

It beat out two Netflix nominees, and they got a Best Picture.

award in very short time for Apple TV Plus.

$25 million isn't even that unusual, according to Matt Bellany.

He thinks Amazon and Netflix spent more.

Netflix must be mad.

Apple's only been in movies and TV for less than three years.

Netflix's been making original content for more than a decade.

Jane Campion won, obviously, best director for Power of the Dog.

It's unclear whether it will bring in subscribers, but they've got Ted Lasso.

Netflix's most famous work is TV shows, Stranger Things, Bridgerton, Squid Game.

So it's just, it's the power of the stream, these tech platforms and their money to be able to do this.

But I think most people had a good feeling about Coda and Power of the Dog, so probably deserve it where they were in the awards thing.

So any thoughts on that briefly?

There's a lot here.

These are both, I'm sure these are both great films.

No one's seen them and a few people will see them.

I actually think that part of the problem is that

regardless of the quality of the filmmaking and the purists will come after me for this, if popular movies, one idea for the Academy Awards would be to show clips of popular movies coming out.

Because the bottom line is, I can't wait to see Coda, but I'm at that age where I like well-done, independent films.

But this had nothing to do with film production on the part of Apple TV Plus.

Apple TV Plus founded at Sundance and paid $25 million for it because Apple wants to develop, cement their brand as being iOS, and that is higher quality, higher performance.

And good, feel good.

He also said, I mean, it sounds like a wonderful film.

I mean, it's about, my understanding is.

They were talking about their leaning it to feel good.

Yeah.

So, but the Academy Awards, I wonder, like last night, everybody said, oh, you know, this will get viewership back.

I'm like, I actually think the Academy Awards, unless they reconfigure their business model, has jumped a shark.

But this was a savvy move by Apple for $25 million to be in the news the next day that Apple TV best picture is worth a lot more than 25 million.

Yep, agreed.

Okay, let's get to our first big story.

Huge changes to be coming for big tech thanks to new regulations from Europe.

Last week, the European governments reached a deal on the Digital Markets Act, a very important thing pushed by Margaret Vestiger aimed at so-called gatekeepers in tech.

If passed, the act will drastically change how tech companies operate.

Giants can no longer favor their own software and services.

This will affect Apple, obviously.

Messaging apps like WhatsApp and iMessage would have to work with smaller messaging services and interoperate, which is a big issue around encryption, from what I've heard a lot from my encryption friends.

Companies would need to obtain, quote, explicit consent to target ads based on personal data.

That is a big move.

Violators could be charged with 10% of their global annual revenue, and repeat offenders would pay even huge, higher fines and could have acquisitions blocked by the European Commission.

The act is expected to pass this summer.

The rules could be in place.

Marguerite Vestiger, who's the competition chief in Europe, said it could be in place as early as October.

As with GDPR, Europe is running the show in terms of regulation, and as U.S.

regulators sit on their ass, I would say.

Well, we've been saying this for a long time, and that is Europe gets most of the downside of big tech.

They get the weaponization of their elections, the polarization, the tax avoidance, the destruction of other kind of mid-tier media companies.

But they don't get any of the great tastes.

They don't get the job growth.

They don't get the massive...

I mean, big tech on a net basis, and I've always said this, is a positive for America.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't look at it.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't hold them accountable.

It doesn't mean we shouldn't regulate.

But the real losers here are Europe.

And the really big losers are some of these developing nations where they have absolutely no seat at the table.

So when you register all of the downside, but a fraction of the upside, there aren't that many hospitals or universities with the names of Google billionaires etched along the side of their hospital in Cologne or in Milan.

So when you have that dynamic,

it stiffens the backbones of regulators.

And Europe has been more aggressive.

Now, here's the thing.

And I don't know if you've really looked at it, but I actually believe GDPR has done nothing but cement.

their dominance.

And many people think that.

And

so much of this is in the details.

and these companies are very savvy they will hire the best law firms and lobbyists in the world in europe europe is not immune to that they will it'll all be in the details and

well although i think europe has learned about that about how they i mean a couple of them that i do think they got to look very careful on is these interoperability of these messaging apps it's there's some legitimate uh uh uh problems around encryption but some of them are pretty clear i think they're they've they've sort of decided the bigs versus the smalls they've got they've They've been a little more sophisticated in this act.

The law would hit Meta, Google, Amazon, Apple.

It might hit Adela Baba and booking.

Smaller players like Snapchat, Pinterest, and eBay, not so much if they don't cross the threshold.

I think they've gotten a lot more savvy.

Also,

you know, I think that it depends on what American regulators do in terms of dealing with this because they haven't done anything.

They might have been nicer to tech companies, by the way.

So tech companies lobbying them to slow down in some fashion, although they say they want regulation, could have been an issue.

But it's certainly not been in the hands of the country where these businesses are located.

I just don't understand.

I would have hoped coming out of COVID, and this is my dream, that on certain things we would decide to join forces and maybe have

the equivalent of their F, that Marguerite Vestier and Lena Kahn

would get together and say, all right, rather than having something awkward that is expensive for the companies to comply with, doesn't make any sense, creates additional friction and regulation, why wouldn't we coordinate around this?

And you can understand our concerns, we can understand yours, and we can do something similar to what Biden did.

And Biden does not get enough credit.

Their messaging has been so shitty.

Biden doesn't get enough credit for a

cross-border tax program that stops this race to the bottom and all these inversion mergers.

Yeah, we should be working with that.

Marjorie and Lena should be hand in hand, trying to say, okay.

They have met, but you're right, 100%.

One of the interesting things, there's two things that I thought she talked about this at Code, but there's very little argument about content and free speech.

She stayed away from that.

She understands what a third rail that is.

It's about privacy.

It's about power.

It's about things, competition.

You know, we are so focused because the right wing is so insane over this issue.

And so is the left to some extent.

but not as much as the right on Section 230.

And then we get sucked up into the First Amendment stuff.

And it's really just about privacy power.

Just so you know, a gatekeeper is defined by tech companies with market capitalizations of at least 75 billion euros, which is 83 billion, or annual revenues within the EU of at least 7.5 billion euros in the past three years.

And they must also have at least 45 million monthly users and 10,000 business users in the EU.

So they've been very canny in terms of what they're focused in on.

They're not getting it.

Now, they don't have the First Amendment in Europe.

They don't.

And so they have a little bit more leeway, but I'm glad we have it here.

But they haven't gotten sucked up into the political stuff that sort of beaches a lot of stuff that happens in this country.

Yeah, I don't.

I'm hopeful, but skeptical.

And that is, I think we've been outgunned.

I think Marguerite Vestier, she's a hero of mine.

She strikes me as a great regulator.

She acknowledges the importance of capitalism.

She doesn't, I don't think she thinks of big tech as the enemy, but she's been one of the few people that's been able to establish consensus across border.

And Europeans, like I said,

they've led the way on this because we have been totally overrun.

We have this idolatry of innovators.

We know, you know, everybody kind of knows somebody who worked at Google and got rich or bought Google stock.

And I don't think the same is true in Europe.

I think they say, okay,

I just think the partisanship is what the problem is over First Amendment stuff.

And it's been devolved into free speech.

It has nothing to do with it.

Free speech.

Did you hear me?

I heard the Martian talking about that last week and i'm like free speech what do you talk what does twitter not allow you to say that you want to say i just don't understand any of this nonsense about the martian what martian uh the guy who has that car company i forget his name he's not in the news a lot he's very humble works for his base nice guy it works for his base it works for his base yeah but now he's threatening to start another social network and i'm like what does go for what does twitter not allow you to do that you want to do i don't it's you can call innocent people pedophiles.

You can create securities violations.

What exactly are you hoping another social network is going to let you do?

Well, you know, I've heard a lot of noise.

A lot of tech guys want to fund cancel culture people who like to push the cancel culture.

They're all everywhere.

Question.

Who's been silenced?

I know.

Thank you, Scott.

That was my whole point.

Yeah, but there's a difference between their career being over and them being silent.

Anyways, let's not even agree to disagree here.

By the way, have you seen Truth Social?

That's making a lot of progress.

We were correct on that one.

All right, Scott, let's go.

That wasn't hard.

That wasn't a tough one.

We'll go on a quick break.

And when we come back, we'll talk about Apple's new subscription plan.

And we'll talk with friends at Pivot, the executive producers of Superpumped.

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All right, Scott, we're back.

Apple is planning a new test of a customer loyalty program, a subscription service for iPhones and other hardware.

Finally, users would receive Apple's newest devices for a yet-to-be-determined fee, though it's said to be higher than the cost of the device.

The program is still in development, isn't expected to roll out before the end of the year, if at all.

Now, some people have the program I do, where

you get a new iPhone every year.

So,

let's talk.

You called this one, Scott.

Here's a clip from our show last June.

Look, the whole world is digressing to two business constructs, and it's either iOS, where you pay a premium and you get more privacy, a more elegant solution, kind of the premium, or it's going to Android where you get essentially the product for free and they figure out a way to monetize you as a user.

I think we're going to see increased market share across the iOS subscription part of the world.

Subscription, whether it's the move to Netflix, whether it's the move to LinkedIn, more and more people like the idea of saying, I don't want my data molested.

I want more privacy.

I want a business model that focuses on the relationship with me.

Okay.

I don't want my data molested either, Scott.

But talk a little bit about this because it's really interesting.

We do have a relationship with Apple with lots of subscriptions.

I have about six.

I feel like I have a bunch.

So talk about how you look at this.

Most people replace their phone every three years.

I actually get a new one every year, pretty much,

because I like the newest version of it because I write about tech.

But talk about what

more this is than what they do now.

Well, so we predicted in our 2021 predictions that Apple would hit 200 bucks a share on a move to subscription.

And we were mostly right.

We were just a little bit early.

But

the biggest mistake we make in marketing, and I said this over and over, is that we believe that choice is a good thing.

It's not.

Consumers don't want more choice.

They want to be more confident in the choices presented.

And Apple's brand is so strong that it creates a ton of confidence that the product you're going to get is going to be elegant, that it connects with other like-minded, artisanal, wealthy people that are great storytellers and aspirational, and that it'll work.

And so, rather than going to the Apple store in the Boca Mall or in Soho and me packing, excuse me, in the meatpacking district or so, come to think of it, send me the latest and greatest.

You know, I love it.

I trust you.

Send it pre-loaded.

I want AirPods.

I want the iPhone, occasionally an iPad for my kids, Apple TV Plus, arcade, Apple Music, and give me a good price and give me exclusives and invite me to cool events and make me feel as if I'm part of an aspirational group within an aspirational group.

And that is part of what is the most accretive action in business history.

And that is a move from transactional to subscription.

And the reason why Apple's stock has tripled in the last two to three years is not because of their earnings or their top line revenue growth.

It's because they have gone from zero to 24% of revenue based on subscription and recurring revenue.

Subscriptions, whether it's music or gaming or whatever, the different things, the insurance that they have on it.

You know, it's interesting because one of the things, you know, I always complain to you is that when I walk into an Apple store still, even though I buy all this stuff, they don't know who I am.

Like they don't treat me better.

There isn't champagne coming out.

And I remember being in an Apple store, you know, in San Francisco where I am right now.

And, you know, it was full.

It's a really fun place to go.

But I feel like when I walk in, my phone should tell them it's Kara Swisher who spent 200, whatever how much hundreds.

I've spent so much money at Apple.

You shouldn't walk into a store.

A nice, attractive, high EQ person.

When I did no, but my point is a nice high EQ person should show up in a nice Apple t-shirt and say, hey, Kara, I'm here to replace, to upgrade this, replace this, and to show you this cool new.

This morning, the CNN Tech folks were over helping me figure out how to do a lab connected to my iPhone and how to, I should have an Apple person figuring it out.

And it might be $100, $200, $300, $500 a month.

I'm not exaggerating Across my companies, and I'm bragging now, I have spent millions of dollars on Apple products.

On Apple products.

Yeah.

And they should invite me

to the screening of WeCrash.

And they should say, we're going to come to your house and install the new Apple TV on your TV.

There are businesses built off of this.

There was a business that does this.

They came in and put my arrows in.

You know what I mean?

They did a better job.

But go ahead.

Sorry.

I believe that business business world is ultimately going to digress to 10, 20, 40% of our expenditures are going to be across a few mega brands that figure out artificial intelligence and go to zero-click ordering, meaning they're going to send you stuff before you ask for it.

Yeah.

Whatever, it wouldn't take much research for them to go, okay, this guy's super into Ted Lasso, always wants the newest iPhone, and has a kid who uses an iPad.

So we're going to do that, send the latest 90 days before anybody else, and we're going to invite him and his sons to the screening of Ted Lasso.

And they could charge me.

And they're also going to see that

I'm not price insensitive, but I'm pretty

much

price inelastic, if you will.

And they're going to say, okay, instead of...

him putting off the iPhone purchase, we're going to be able to say to the markets, this guy is spending $5,000 a year with us.

And there's 40,000 other people like him that we're going to sign up in the next 90 days.

And the stock is going to go from $3 trillion to $4 trillion.

What's interesting, let me finish that story.

I get that with the Apple store, but I still, if I want to go into that and like it, I like to look at things.

This kid was sexting on the new iPhone near me.

And I was like, I couldn't, and I could not get a person to come up to me.

And did you respond on your phone?

No, I did not.

Maybe because he was sexting you, you little saucy me.

He was not.

I know.

But I was like, so I find that.

Are Apple stores the new gay bars, be honest?

No, no, not at all.

I know.

I never go to bars.

But I was like, that guy, that kid is sexting and I want to buy a new iPhone.

Why am I waiting?

Like, what is the deal?

They're in my way.

You know what I mean?

There should be an area.

And it wasn't like I spend more money, but I'm a better customer and they should know me.

The other thing is I went on to one of the Apple sites and they have devices I no longer use that are still attached to it.

And I'm like, don't you know I don't use them because I've turned them in or whatever.

I was sort of mad at them, like that they didn't know me the way they should know me, you know, that I deserve more because I'm a better customer.

They could do, I would buy, I would like to go to, you know, I don't watch Ted Losto, but the Wee Crash Premiere, you're right.

I would like to get special new things early.

I would like to, you know, I have to discover openings, tutorials in their theaters and their stores.

Little brick that you put on the back of my iPhone, a battery.

I didn't know until I was in the store.

Why didn't I know about that?

Like, why didn't they tell me?

For a marketing company that's so good, they're not good at individual marketing.

You know what?

all?

This is all a big ad, not only for the power of the subscription model, but also, and their PE has grown from 15 to 34 or something, but it's a big ad, and I hate to say this because we're conflicted.

It's a big ad for Salesforce because the ability to take all these data points in a B2B manner and create better service, it's all CRM.

And what's amazing is when you think about the potential, you want to talk about potential for CRM?

Yeah.

Disney should be able to know that I am obsessed with the Mandalorian and Boba Fett.

They should know that I have two sons.

They should know that I live in California.

And guess what?

If they'd sent me a special invitation to the opening of that Starship Cruiser Hotel, I would have paid anything.

Really?

And I would have been first in line.

And nothing, though.

Absolutely nothing.

Nothing.

Same thing.

They should know I love Encanto.

And I don't love Encanto.

I think everybody knows you love Encanto, Kira.

No, no.

But my kid listens to Encanto and Moana on full, like, you're right.

They do need to pay attention.

They're individual consumers more.

It's very easy now because of digital.

Now, one thing that's interesting, another thing,

I think of them all the time.

I have all these old, I, I, all these old Macs, and I'm like, do I have to take them back to the store?

Do I not come to your house, pick them up?

We'll dispose of them.

Pick up my phone.

Do not throw them out.

I want to know where they went.

Agreed.

You know, that kind of stuff.

I have all kinds of issues.

I'm going to call Tim Cook for lunch and start complaining.

You call Tim.

You call Tim.

I will.

But one of the things that's interesting is the buy now, pay later, this idea of renting.

I'd like to rent these these things like to i'd like to feel like i'm renting them a little bit more they're perishable it would cost you more to rent than to buy them but i guess yeah they in any case the half-life on those things they they'd kind of depreciate 30 a year within three years so basically we're zero so essentially apple we like this other companies you should do this disney is one amazon is someone i would have a much deeper relationship with if if i felt i had more value i have a pretty good one um i'm trying to think of who else what if nike did it your gym, travel on the road,

all your shoes, all your workout.

Well, if Nike owned Peloton, they just said, we're going to take over your fitness life.

Peloton.

You know, when I did that Peloton, that was so eye-opening how much more consumers wanted from them than they were giving them.

Consumers wanted a bigger, they wanted health stuff.

They wanted exercise stuff.

They wanted diet stuff.

They want some clothing stuff, not buying it, but access to things.

Anyway, it was.

I want Whole Foods to molest my privacy.

I want Whole Foods to know where I am.

And then when they see them in in New York for four days, I want them to have my refrigerator stock when I get there with all the stuff I like.

I'll tell you what he's got in his refrigerator, a weird combination of liquor and very woke food.

He has the most, I have like non-woke food in my house.

And Scott, he always talks to me about being woke.

But if you looked at his cabinet versus mine, you'd say I'm a conservative Midwestern lady.

And his is like, you have the most woke food of anyone I've ever seen.

A lot of liquor.

Daddy loves the sauce.

A lot of liquor.

A lot of sauce.

Daddy loves the sauce.

Anyway, Apple, we like it.

More of, please.

All right.

Now let's bring in our friends of Pivot.

Brian Koppelman, David Levine, and Beth Schachter are the executive producers of Super Pumped, Showtime series about the rise of Uber.

Brian and David are the show's creators as well.

We don't usually have this many guests, but we're very excited to have Team Super Pumped.

Thanks for coming thank you thanks psych to be here kara so i i think we'll we'll start with david uh with brian's who i know pretty well um travis kalanik makes for great television since he was a unique player um or was uber part of were you trying to do a story of a larger problem of silicon valley Well, it started, Kara, it's so great to be here, Scott.

Scott, I don't know if you saw, but Kara and I grew up in the same house, we found out.

Yeah.

So

it's wild, actually.

we got to trade those stories.

This started with

the book.

You know, you're very close with Mike Isaac.

Yeah, he worked for me.

So you know the kind of storyteller he is.

And when he sent me the book over Twitter, that's what he did.

He wrote, he's like, we look at my manuscript.

We didn't start with a desire to tell this kind of story.

It was like we read Mike's book.

And then that book seemed to us to

ask a lot of questions we wanted to ask about the cost of disruption and the rewards of disruption, right?

And this seemed

a great arena in which to examine it.

That's the, you know, and then these characters are like Shakespearean characters in real life.

So those things together made it really exciting to us.

Did you think it was a larger problem in Silicon Valley?

Or they were unique as evil people of Silicon Valley, villains, essentially.

Like if you're defining the problem as

the

win-it-all win-it-all-cost mentality that Mike depicts in the book and the justification of

many decisions under the guise of

sort of fomenting

a legitimate rebellion, but in fact, doing something else, maybe.

Maybe it's a broader problem.

It's something that you guys understand better than we understand.

You've studied it for far longer.

But the specifics of this were compelling enough that it seemed to us to, even at the beginning, to suggest a broader problem.

And then as we did our research and as Mike brought people to us who were experts, yeah, it seemed like it very well might be.

But the specific of this unicorn were enough to fire us up.

And let me ask Beth why do you think these stories of founders and unicorns are in vogue right now?

There's Superpump, the dropout, We Crashed.

You could sort of say inventing Anna is in that genre, but it's not a tech one.

Why do you think you know, tech was so celebrated or else it was sort of made fun of on Silicon Valley, the actual TV show on HBO.

Why do you think now this is getting the true?

I mean, I think we think of first we think sort of of the show as a little bit distinct in the fact that

we don't have Theranos in our house and we don't have WeWork anymore and Anna Delvey's in prison.

And I think those are more stories of grifters who got caught grifting, whereas Travis is really the story of someone who truly saw something that could be upset and disrupted, disrupted it, and along the way became the kind of malevolent force that he was trying to disrupt.

So I'm not sure why it all happens

at the same time.

I think those are questions that we may need a little bit of more distance to understand, but I do think there's some distinctions there.

I mean, I think also the shows that are being made with WeWork and with the the Theranos story are just extraordinary and really about culture in interesting ways and are filled with amazing acting.

And Leslie, David, what did you learn about Silicon Valley doing the show?

I mean, not everybody's like Travis.

You know that.

You're aware.

I mean, very few.

Well, we've been told, you know, he comes off as such a unique individual in the pages of Mike's book.

And we had to sort of double check and make sure this was for real.

And we did interview a lot of people who interacted with him.

And they

basically confirmed what Mike said in more blunt terms often.

We learned that somebody with a force of personality and will

who

was able to enlist people in his vision could onboard huge amounts of money and get more powerful than in almost any field very quickly.

And that was fascinating to us.

Yeah.

So I just want to start.

I'm not a huge fan of Uber.

I think they use software to circumvent minimum wage laws.

But I worry that

we conflate the three.

We have a woman who lied to investors, lost a billion dollars of money, is going to prison.

We have a guy who exaggerated, was trying to shovel his unicorn shit onto retail investors at a $60 billion valuation.

It's now at four.

A lot of people could have lost a lot of money.

And then there's Uber,

and kind of distinct of the Frat Bro complexion, which I, you know,

is at a minimum not in vogue and at a maximum, just

not the way to run a business or create a positive work environment.

But it's a $70 billion company.

A lot of people made a lot of money.

It's provided economic security for a lot of people.

It's a great service.

New York City has just announced a strike-a-deal with them.

Isn't it, quite frankly, aren't you giving Travis a bad rap?

Does he deserve to be grouped in with these other folks?

We only made the one show very different not a grifter yeah we're not not only are we not grouping him in but in every interview we've ever given we've said he's there he's not let me ask the question another way beth you describe travis kalanik as a malevolent force say more um well no because I think the show describes him as a malevolent force.

And I think that the show shows him as a malevolent force.

And I think the show is asking the audience to grapple with the fact.

And you said it very well, Scott, just now.

We have Uber in our pocket.

It is a company that exists and is real.

It wasn't a grift.

We're asking the audience to say, okay, now that you know the cost of this disruption, how do you feel about it in your pocket?

So hopefully the show says more.

I know it's right now, because I think you guys may have only gotten the first five episodes, you don't see the full, the totality of what we're actually trying to say.

But truly, we want the audience to say, ask exactly the question you're just asking, which is, is it fair?

Brian, you wanted to say something?

So yes, Travis won and the company won.

And I agree with you about basically a lot of what you said.

But let's just examine the safe rides fee, the thing we started with.

And I think you have to actually just for a moment really take it in.

There was an outcry about how unsafe Ubers were, documented evidentiary, right?

The solution that they propagated was we're adding a fee to every ride, every single ride, a $1 fee that is going to go toward making Uber safer.

Yeah.

They took that money and put it to the bottom line, spent 200,000 out of whatever, 300 million,

and took the rest of it and just put it to their bottom line and never made anyone safer and did nothing with it.

That alone vitiates the question.

That alone, I think, speaks to if that's all they did at the beginning, it's enough to say,

to not in any way group the company in with the other things, but it's enough to raise the question of what price are we willing to pay for the advancement in transportation tech.

Yeah, I recall when it was happening when they were charging so little for

rides.

I think it was like $3 across San Francisco or some small, less than the muni for sure.

And someone's like, this is great.

I'm like, do you think this is what it costs?

Do you think this is the actual, I said, let's figure out who's paying here.

And it's certainly not you it's either the vcs or it's the drivers but some it's coming out of someone's hide i'm hoping it's the vcs but i'm guessing it's the drivers at some point and so uh which i kept mentioning and everyone was like this is great you're a bummer and i'm like this has a cost that we don't even understand it also gets rid of healthcare blah blah blah blah blah because I'm an irritating person.

But what do you, when you talk about that, what do you think people will walk away with?

Any one of you can answer this.

This idea that, well, it was worth it because we have this great service that is now being run by someone with some level of ethics um

you know in terms of rolling it out and every you know every great fortune starts with a with a crime obviously is the is the old saying so how do you how do you think how do you come away with it when we have this great service it's created all kinds of wealth it's it is a business though i still question whether it's an actual business still which i do to dar all the time because it doesn't seem to be able to make money um even when they charge higher prices.

What did each of you walk away from it?

Was it worth it?

There's a lot built into that question.

A couple of things.

One, our show focuses on the first chapter of the emergence of the company really in Travis's regime.

It is a very different place now that Dar took over, and there is a chunk of the book devoted to that.

That's very fascinating, but we only had so much runway to make our show.

The other thing, is it worth it?

What do we expect an audience to take away?

I mean,

the general public has limited ability to,

you know, make a direct change on a big industry or a particular business other than not using it, which happened for a while

when Lyft came to the fore.

And I would say, you know, the one thing that we found out about that we put in the show is

how corrupt and

insidious the taxi and livery business was, the way that the medallion systems were strangling cities and drivers.

So there was that moment of hope that it was going to change things for the drivers.

But then, as so often happens, the new power became just as corrupt.

Yes, indeed.

More so in the overall.

I'd be curious across the three of you, what was the biggest surprise?

You obviously got to know the company and the story and the characters really well.

What was the biggest surprise, or what might be, in your view, the biggest kind of misconception we as the public have about the story or the characters what shocked you about this as you got to know the story better for me it was the brazenness with which they just went at it um

they would use the software in invasive ways to further their aims to to combat regulators and they acted as if there wasn't going to be any price to pay for it which was amazing and as a company there was very little price to pay for it in the end travis um

you know had to leave at some point but that was pretty shocking to me.

What about you, Brian?

I would say two things.

One, that Garrett Camp actually had the idea.

Like reading the book,

Travis Kalanik is so well known for this.

And obviously, Garrett's a genius and had many ideas that were incredibly great ideas.

And that he picked an operator and then that he empowered this operator to act as though he were a founder.

I think was an amazing sort of move.

And obviously, and everyone I know who knows Garrett, they love him.

So I find that fascinating too, that he's a completely different cat in a way.

And we try to show that

in the show.

And then, you know, back to Scott's sort of like the

question about the nature of Uber.

Like, if I look at the geofencing they did over Apple,

that notion is so outrageous to me that

if it's, as Mike reported, again, I don't have any special knowledge, but what Mike reports in the book is that Travis made a promise to Eddie Q and Tim Cook, and that promise was: I will, this tracking software will not be in the app anymore.

We won't track people.

We understand you'll kick us out of the app store.

And that then the engineer's solution, instead of doing what was committed to their biggest right vendor or client, Apple, the Apple relate App Store relationship with Uber, was the most important.

Instead, they used Skull Duggary and build text Skull Duggarie and build a geofence so that the software acted the way he promised only within 200 miles of cupertino yeah and everywhere else it was still invading uh every one of us as we used it the as david said the brazenness of that and i mean who would ever think that you could pull that off over the most technologically sophisticated company in the world Apple, and that he did.

And then that Tim Cook sat with him and warned him and let him continue, let the company continue.

So the mutuality of the music.

Well, they knew it wouldn't.

They wouldn't kick him off.

They knew, you know, he is the only person I've seen.

Tim Cook doesn't react to much.

He's very like adult.

And the only time I've ever seen Tim Cook, I had lunch with him and I asked him about it.

And I've never seen him roll his eyes.

And he did a massive eye roll.

And then he goes, that guy.

And that's all he said.

And I was like, whoa.

It was like the biggest insult I've ever seen.

I was like, oh my God, are you going to have him killed now or something?

So what do you think, Beth?

Sort of a

broader, for me, was the women that were involved in Uber

and the range of reactions to Travis.

I think we tend to want and hope that women are a monolith, especially within tech, and women are not, obviously, a monolith.

And we know that, but we hope for it, like as we want, just like, can't we all just link arms and march together against misogyny and to see the breadth of it of experience and the different kinds of women that were surrounding Travis including and especially Austin Geit who was a I'm really fascinated by

so her story just for me was a real surprise and a wonderful surprise and then you know just on a practical level being able to have Carrie Bache play her also a wonderful thing

Yeah, she was a conflicted person.

I have to tell you, you got Jill and Rachel wrong completely.

They just don't don't behave like that.

They just, I'm sorry.

It's just, I was, we were laughing and we got on text with them.

They, they're the two PR.

That's why they call it original scripted drama, Kara.

I know that, but I was like, this is hysterical with the legs and the, oh my God.

Um, anyway, um, let me ask you, wait, they don't have legs in real life, they do have legs, but not like you know what I'm talking about.

It's the metaverse, no legs allowed.

The Ariana character, I loved it, it was fantastic.

She did a great job.

But Ariana was even more than she portrayed, let me just say.

One of the funniest things was Ariana was trying very hard to bridge the gap between Travis's just mendacious fuckiness and what was going on, especially during those more difficult times as they started to remove him from power.

And she stuck with him for a long time.

And at the same time, she wanted to appeal to people who knew that he was a mendacious fuck, essentially.

And she one time called me up and she goes, Cara, I'm working with him to become a better person.

And, you know, I'm doing all kinds of things, but I really don't, I haven't seen him at all.

Not at all.

And I'm really mad at him.

And someone texted me right at that moment and said, do you know, I'm in Ariana's living room and I see she's talking to you.

And Travis is sitting right here.

Just so you know, he came over for dinner.

And so I was like, so I go, oh, really?

You're not seeing him at all.

And she goes, oh, no, Kara.

And I go, not like right now on your couch.

And she's like, oh, he was hungry.

He needed dinner.

He was wandering around Soho.

And you know, I'd bring anyone into my house.

And I was like, okay.

Thank you, Ariana, for that great moment in Ariana-ness.

And it made me, it just, I like the portrayal.

So there's my.

We are definitely talking to you before we do the Facebook thing because you have the best book.

No, I'm writing my book.

You got to buy my book.

And that you'll see what happens in that one.

So, Mark Cuban plays himself on the show.

How come Kara Swisher didn't get a phone call?

Are you in the show?

No.

No.

I only hired and facilitated.

Someone's jealous.

I know, because he's in the Zuckerberg show.

I don't know if you guys are in the show.

He's in the WeWork.

Fascinating.

And good luck telling the Zuckerberg story without a Swisher cameo.

I don't know how you're going to do it.

Come do the cameo in that story.

Come on.

We thought that we would be saying you're welcome to the thank you, but I guess we have to say we apologize and we'll make sure it happens the next time you cannot tell the zuckerberg story without sweaty swisher that's what i have to say um well now that's what they're going to call you in the show i mean they're going to refer to you that way now in no facebook story i believe they refer to me as a much stronger word and it starts oh i don't know it could be a lot of them um but speaking of which your net super pump two has been announced this season we'll look at facebook with a focus on mark and cheryl what can you tell us about that because i have to tell you being up close and personal in that relationship, it's one of the dullest relationships I've ever seen.

But go ahead, tell us about it.

It's based on Mike's book on the Facebook.

Yeah, Mike's got to write the book.

We can't give you much info yet, but we will closer to the time.

Okay, nothing.

Can we use that as a pull quote?

Kara says it's the dullest relationship.

I don't know where there's drama at all.

I mean, there is a little bit, but no.

They're really dull people.

No,

it might be more about when the two of them, the effect they've had on the world, which I don't think is dull.

All right.

What do you think, Scott?

What do you think they should focus in on the Mark and Cheryl?

Scott has a tougher view of Cheryl than I do.

I don't know.

The mendacious fuck and his $2 billion beard, like ruining the world.

I don't know.

That's a pretty good basis for drama.

That's the name of it.

The mendacious fucking quote.

Tuple quotes now.

Now we have two pull quotes.

And then next, the year after will be, what, the Netflix drama, of which there isn't any?

I mean, obviously the pivot story is season three.

That's brilliant.

I think that's clear.

Karen's.

Now that's a saucy relationship.

That is a saucy relationship.

That relationship makes the room sexier by leaving.

Yes, exactly.

In my opinion, the Facebook drama, what's unfolded there is the elephant and Uber's a pimple.

I think the,

I don't know.

I really hope that you bring, and Mike, Mike always brings it, but if you can bring that to life, that'll be an important piece of family.

It will.

Yeah.

But just not focus on their very dull relationship.

Anyway, you're part of the team behind billions, since you can't tell us anything about the Facebook thing, but call us if if you'd like some information.

Another show about a high-powered businessman and politicians trying to outwit each other.

How does the world of tech differ from finance, or does money create drama wherever it lands?

I mean, that actually is a great poll quote.

Money does create drama wherever it lands.

One thing that we were aware of when we were focusing on the hedge fund space is

these people, especially the characters we started the series with, didn't really

create anything or even purport to change the world.

They just wanted to take their peace out of making these trades.

And then

the landscape started to shift with the introduction of this Michael Prince character, who is a guy who comes from startup backgrounds and then was a VC.

You know, it's an interesting thing.

The tech people are trying to create things that change your life and change the world in a positive way.

At the very beginning, they all do say that and mean it, we think.

And some of the Wall Street guys just want to make a return.

Yeah, I would agree with that, although I think I prefer the Wall Street people because it's very clear.

I think the tech people are performative in their changing the world stuff most of the time.

They just like money and power with the

same difference.

Well, that was what it's funny.

You know, when we had that Mike Berbigli, a character on Billions, who played Oscar Langstrat, who's the VC, he was more like that, like someone, you know, who's read the Tibetan Book of the Dead or the Book of Living and Dying, but only so that they can use it to charm a founder.

And,

but when I will say, like, we've had through billions the opportunity to spend time with people like Mark Andreessen

and Chris Sokka and Bill Gurley.

And, and when you're around some of these VCs, and Mark, who's to me incredibly fascinating because

almost

almost as a unicorn unto himself, somebody who was able to, as a programmer, change the world and then as a VC change the world.

And they do, it seems to me that someone, if we look at someone like Andreessen,

he just thinks differently than anybody else I've ever met.

And I do believe that many people in the industry you've covered so closely

read books that are different than the hedge fund people read,

think about, have to contextualize whether they have to do it as a way to curry favor with the business they they want to do or not, they do have a Catholicity of interests and they do have

a breadth of knowledge.

And then they use that in some way to affect the world.

And I don't know, I'm fascinated by that interlocking thing where they could all be professors.

Very few of the hedge fund people could be professors.

I've worked, I advise a lot of hedge funds and I heard that Axe was actually a mashup of four different hedge fund guys and I named them and I've worked with a couple of them.

Is that true that it was meant to be a composite of four different famous hedge fund guys?

I was going to say, he's sort of a composite, but not four specific people just cordered up like that.

We just, as a hedge fund operator in our show, we wanted him to be able to do basically every style of investing so that we had more options in a way that no one person in real life would.

But the fun thing is one of those people who you definitely know who the person is went up to Damien at the U.S.

Open one year and was like, I'm Bobby Axelrod.

And this was not Steve Cohen.

Let me be really clear.

Is it Acme or Loeb?

The only one I'll say it's not is Steve Cohn.

But this guy goes up to him at the open and goes, I'm Bobby Axelrod.

And Damien texts us, is this guy Bobby Axelrod?

And we were like, no, man,

that guy's not Bobby Axelrod.

Well, everybody started saying it when the show was a hit.

100%.

We just interviewed Kelly,

who plays Jeff Bezos in your show and plays Scott Galloway, which is, of course, his greatest role of all time.

Don Dollar Bill on billions.

Dollar Bill on Billions.

He's really great.

One of the interviews I did with Travis was when he told the truth about what he was up to.

It was a shocking interview because I asked him, you know, when are you ever going to make money?

I do math and this doesn't make sense to me.

None of this does.

You know, it just doesn't add up.

And he's...

He said, he turned to me in this interview.

It was a public interview.

And he said, you know, Kara, when we can get rid of the guys in the front seats, that'll be great.

That'll be fantastic.

Essentially, that's what he said.

I don't have the exact words, but it was that lines is that once we get automated cars, it all works out.

So we're just using these people as fodder to get where we want to get.

And a lot of people were horrified.

And I said, thank you.

Thank you for finally telling the truth of what a malignant fuck you are, you know, and what you're thinking about this.

And I thought it was actually quite refreshing because he was being clear about one of the things I did appreciate with Travis, he was he didn't hide his face the way a lot of them do.

Did you, did you have that feeling?

I talked to Joseph Gordon-Levitt about it, about this idea of brutal honesty that I appreciated, even though I was repulsed by it at the same time.

Did you come away with an admiration for him at all?

Any of you?

It's hard to call it admiration, though.

I'll say the show in the later episodes does get into that question of automated cars and getting rid of the drivers and the human beings being the impediment to the whole thing working.

You know, it's, I would say we're fascinated by the way that he's a brutalist in that way.

We don't admire it, but it is quite fascinating to us.

What about Beth or?

Yeah, I would just say that we don't really, we try not to put a moral judgment on it, but instead try to create the most

complex version of the character based on the book that Mike delivered to us and the conversations we had.

And I think that's something, again, that the audience has to grapple with, which is

he said it to your face.

He was not hiding auto.

No.

He couldn't.

No.

So what does that mean whenever you get in a car that's run by that company?

Have you heard from any of the characters or the financiers?

And what has been their response to the program?

Well, the answer is, I do know Gurley, but we mostly talk about Jason Isbel, not the show.

Okay, because he comes off good comes the god so why wouldn't he like

there was a big outreach from various people before we and during making the show and we spoke to some people we didn't speak to others we never spoke to travis but then when the show i understand he reached out correct i'm sure he did when when the show started to air

the the sort of conversational outreach definitely went quiet.

Because, you know, they weren't going to be able to affect anything, I suppose.

Right.

Right.

So they just wanted to move away from

the thing.

Well, I suppose that's the best outcome, right?

So the final question I have is: does it make you use Uber more or less since you did this?

I find Lyft is an amazing platform.

Yeah.

Okay.

I use Lyft exclusively now, though, like as Beth likes to point out,

none of us are perfect.

We're all deeply flawed.

I mean, if I were stuck somewhere and I couldn't get a Lyft,

just to go back to Scott's original point, Uber is ubiquitous and it's a really good service in lots of ways.

But I use Lyft.

I would say I haven't used Uber since the show started, but I can't say I can't take a purity test.

I would if I had to.

Yeah.

What about you, Beth?

I don't use Uber unless I am in a position where it's, you know, standing in the cold or...

not stand in the cold.

But I think as

we say in the show itself, like we are all constantly making these decisions based on the information we have available, and our brains are incredibly good at shutting out the information we have about many, many corporations that do really terrible things because we like the taste of the french fries or the taste of the chicken sandwich.

So,

you know, I am imperfect.

Thank you very much, Beth Schachter, Brian Koppelman, and David Levine.

You can find Super Super Pumped on Showtime.

New episodes are out every Sunday, and there are just two more left.

I wonder how it ends.

Thank you so much.

Congrats.

Well done.

Thank you.

Thank you both so much.

Thanks.

All right, Scott, one more quick break.

That was really interesting.

We'll be back for predictions.

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Okay, Scott, time for predictions.

Obviously, you did a good job on Apple.

So what is your next prediction?

You can talk about whether your show is going to be a hit.

How well CNN Plus, if you want to go out on that limb, you can do it.

I'll be happy to saw it off after you.

Look, I am really rattled by what happened last night, and I'm getting mocked on Twitter for, oh, clutching his pearls.

Why is he so triggered by this?

But

I think what Janiah Nelson, who's at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said, and that is the way casual violence was normalized tonight by a collective national audience will have consequences we can't even fathom in the moment.

And so my prediction is, and I always try to look at this through the lens of young men, there were two men involved last night, and one demonstrated tremendous masculinity, and the other is Will Smith.

So my prediction is that as we come to grips with what these little instances of normalizing violence are and the repercussions, we're going to realize

that our society needs to absolutely reject this and redefine masculinity is that strength and power and advocating for others is one thing.

And I want to be honest, I I think there is a time for violence.

And I think that's being demonstrated by brave men and women in Ukraine.

I do think that occasionally you do need that big dick, toxic masculinity to pick up arms and protect others.

But

it could be toxic.

It could be for a good reason.

What people describe as toxic.

But, anyways,

point taken.

There's nothing toxic about protecting your home.

My other prediction is, and I'm trying to use my platforms to bring attention to Ukraine,

but I think we're going to, there's just so many stories, but almost 4 million Ukrainian refugees so far expect 10 million

heroic efforts to survive and save others.

And the trauma they will process for years is unfathomable.

I also loved that actor dressed up as a bunny to comfort children in subway shelters and Kharkiv.

Did you see this on TikTok?

No, I did not.

But basically a lot of there's been this great footage of this guy roaming the streets under threat of shelling to rescue stray dogs.

I just think there are just millions of points of light.

So I'm trying to reposition a win as a prediction.

I think we're going to look back on this period and find just moments, millions of moments of

heroism.

uh yeah taking place in in ukraine war brings app out absolutely the worst in society but it does oftentimes get people to demonstrate the best.

I agree.

I predict there's it's going to be a long haul for Russia to do this to these people.

I interviewed two people this morning quite early in California time.

One was a

journalist and disinformation expert from Ukraine.

She broadcast, she called me from her basement where she had to move to Western Ukraine with her child

and will not leave the country.

She refuses.

It's safer in Western Ukraine, obviously, right now.

And her determination was quite adamant.

And then I interviewed the head of TV Rain, who had to close down

his independent media company in Russia.

He left the country because he was endangered over that law,

making it illegal.

He refused to broadcast lies with the government.

And he just interviewed President Zelensky and the Russians, that's illegal.

He's a Russian citizen.

He still did it anyway.

I have great hope for these people.

I really do.

I was really moved by their determination and not in a sentimental way.

They're like, we're not, this is our home.

We're doing our job.

And I was, and Demcom Democracy really seems to have, they both talked about the tech groups and how it had become more entrepreneurial and democratic.

And it gave me great hope talking to these people.

I have great hope for that country, hopefully, that we, and we should step up helping them keep a democracy that was growing really nicely in a country that deserves it.

So that's what I would say.

There you go.

Thank you.

There you go.

Okay, Scott, that's the show.

You're missing the launch party, Kara.

I'm sorry.

Just drink without.

Just think.

The show got lied.

The show didn't get canceled before it launched.

That's a victory.

That's a victory.

But let me just tell you what you need to do with this party.

What do I need to do?

Do not drink.

Oh, I'm a better vision of me drunk.

Don't drink and do something bad.

Take off your affectionate.

Show your stomach to people.

Don't super pump me.

Don't conflate me.

I'm just going to drink.

I'm just telling you, I don't mean to be canceled.

I'm excited to pay $30.

It's when a camera goes on me that I lose it.

I'm actually excited to pay $3 to hear what you say to me all the time.

I'm very there.

You go.

There you go.

All right.

Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin.

Ernie Intertod engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Emil Severio.

Make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

Thanks for listening to Pivot and New York magazine and Vox Media.

We'll be back later this week for a breakdown of all things tech and business.

What do real men do?

They de-escalate the situation.

And watch scott's show also thanks gara

this month on explain it to me we're talking about all things wellness we spend nearly two trillion dollars on things that are supposed to make us well collagen smoothies and cold plunges pilates classes and fitness trackers but What does it actually mean to be well?

Why do we want that so badly?

And is all this money really making us healthier and happier?

That's this month on Explain It to Me, presented by Pureleaf.

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